Reuters: France urged Iran on Tuesday not to carry out a threat to resume uranium enrichment-related activities, which the European Union and the United States fear could be a step towards developing nuclear weapons. Fellow EU member Britain said that any resumption would spell an end to European negotiations with Tehran over the long-term future of its nuclear programme.

AFP: Students from one of the Iranian capital's main universities staged a sit-in on Tuesday for the first time in months to protest at human rights violations and the jailing of political activists, witnesses said. The gathering in Amir Kabir university, one of the most active centres of political dissent in the Islamic republic in recent years, totalled some 200 peaceful demonstrators amid tight security and there was no sign of violence.

AFP: The Iranian ambassador to the Netherlands was summoned to the foreign ministry here Tuesday after a Dutch member of parliament of Iranian descent charged that she had been harassed while on a trip to Teheran. "The minister has summoned the Iranian ambassador to the ministry and he will write a letter to his Iranian counterpart to demand information about what happend," Foreign Minister Ben Bot's spokesman Bart Jochems said.

AFP: The international nuclear energy watchdog fears that a resumption by Iran of sensitive nuclear activity is inevitable, diplomats in Vienna said Tuesday. Earlier Tehran said it would decide within days whether to resume some such activities, despite fresh warnings that the move could bring talks with the European Union to an end and result in possible UN sanctions.

Reuters: Iran shrugged off U.S. and EU warnings that it could be hauled before the U.N. Security Council and confirmed on Tuesday it would resume some sensitive nuclear work very soon. "The decision to resume some activities has been taken and now we are discussing the timing for resuming. But this decision is imminent as well," Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, told Reuters.

Financial Times: European governments intend to call a crisis meeting of the United Nations nuclear watchdog's governing board next week if Iran carries out its threat to resume sensitive nuclear processes, western diplomats in Vienna said on Tuesday. The meeting at the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency would discuss the prospects of a referral of the Iran nuclear dispute to the UN Security Council, where the US would lobby for sanctions.

AFP: European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he favors transferring the case of Iran's nuclear activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if talks break down between Iran and the EU, the Russian news agency Interfax reported Tuesday.

Reuters: Schoolgirls, factory workers and wizened clerics flowed into Iran's Interior Ministry on Tuesday to register to stand for president in an election next month, annoying officials who said they were time-wasters.
The Interior Ministry has flung open its doors for five days of registration for the June 17 poll.

AFP: An Iranian man convicted of murder has been hanged in prison in the Caspian Sea town of Noshahr, the Jomhuri Eslami newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Quoted by the paper, a judiciary official in the port city said 23-year-old Majid Alghosi was executed for killing Siavosh Abassian in a family feud some four years ago. No further details were given.

AFP: Iran will decide within the next few days on whether to resume some sensitive nuclear activities that were suspended as part of a deal with the European Union, a senior official told AFP on Tuesday. "It (the decision) will come at the end of the week (Friday), at the latest," said Ali Agha Mohammadi, a spokesman for the Islamic republic's Supreme National Security Council.

Financial Times: Senior British officials warned last night that talks with Iran over its nuclear ambitions were on the point of collapse and that it risked referral to the United Nations Security Council.

AFP: The United States warned Iran on Monday that a resumption of its suspended nuclear fuel activities would have "consequences" for the Islamic Republic, suspected of working toward an atomic bomb. But acting State Department spokesman Tom Casey did not specify what steps the United States and its European allies might take if Iran broke an agreement struck last year during negotiations on its nuclear program.

Iran Focus: Berlin, May 09  Thousands of Iranians from across Germany held their first-ever major convention in Berlin this afternoon, in which they rejected the policy of appeasement and a foreign war in dealing with the Tehran regime. The participants, who represented various Iranian communities throughout the country, declared their support for the Third Option, introduced by Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.

Reuters: Iran said on Monday it would resume uranium enrichment-related activities within days, a move the United States and the European Union have warned would see its nuclear case escalated to the U.N. Security Council. "We will lift the first stage of our suspension, which is that of our UCF (Uranium Conversion Facility) project in Isfahan, in the next few days," Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, told a university conference, the official IRNA news agency reported.

AFP: Iran's Guardians Council, a hardline body that screens all legislation, has rejected a highly contentious law that allowed abortions in limited cases, the student news agency ISNA reported on Monday. "It is against sharia (Islamic law) to abort children who would inflict a financial burden on the parents after birth due to mental or physical handicap," ISNA said, quoting parliamentary sources.

Press Association: Iran confirmed today it had converted 37 tons of raw uranium into gas needed to enrich uranium just before suspending all uranium enrichment related activities last year, a top nuclear official said. Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, said the work had been conducted at one of its nuclear facilities in central Iran, which the United States alleges is part of a programme to produce atomic weapons.